Health

The health gauge in Minecraft displays how much damage the player is able to take before dying. It is usually based on a single row of 10 heart icons. Each full heart contains two halves, one health point each (the player normally has 20 maximum health points).

Hearts[]

Hearts make up the health meter for the player in the Survival, Hardcore‌^{[Java Edition only]} (with a different texture), and Adventure modes, as well as for mobs. Each heart represents two hit points. Hit points are lost when players or mobs take damage, which can be any percentage of those hearts. However, damage less than 1 is not visible on the health bar.

If the health meter shows or less, it begins to shake violently, warning that the player is low on health.

Health can be recovered through several means, both "naturally" and through status effects.

• The Instant Health effect restores health immediately, the amount depending on the source and effect level.
• On Peaceful difficulty, the health meter continuously refills over time.
• On other difficulties, health regenerates slowly when the player's hunger is at or above 18 ( × 9).
• The Regeneration effect makes health regenerate fairly quickly, and the hearts in the health meter bounce in a wave. Aside from potions of Regeneration, this is also provided by beacons and golden apples. The golden apple provides it (level II) for 5 seconds, restoring a total of 4. The enchanted golden apple provides Regeneration II for 20 seconds, regenerating about 16 × 8‌^{[JE only]}/Regeneration V for 30 seconds, regenerating about 200 × 100.‌^{[BE only]}
• The Health Boost effect adds 4 () per effect level to the player's total health that can be healed or regenerated by normal means, which is removed when the effect expires. After the effect expires, the player's health may remain above the normal maximum, but the extra health is not recovered once lost to damage. This effect can be gained only through commands or mods. At the levels of 252-256 (with amplifiers 251 to 255), the player has 512 hearts (1024 health points, the "red health" limit for entities).
• The Absorption effect likewise adds 4 for each effect level. Different from the Health Boost effect, this special health cannot be healed or regenerated by normal means. Naturally, it is removed when the effect expires. The golden apple provides it (level I) for 2 minutes, providing a total of 4. The enchanted golden apple provides it at higher level (level IV), providing a total of 16 × 8.

Damage is split between the health and armor bars. Each full armor point takes 8% of damage, to a maximum of 80%, rounded up. Armor points also protect less damage (and deal more hearts) with stronger attacks.‌^{[Java Edition only]}

On Hardcore mode, hearts have a different texture ().

The Poison and Wither effects turn hearts a sickly green color and black, respectively. On Hardcore, they turn when poisoned and when withered. Freezing in powder snow cause hearts to turn cyan ( on Hardcore mode).

In Creative mode, the player is immune to all forms of damage. In Bedrock Edition, this includes the void and the /kill command.

The player's health bar is invisible while holding or wearing an item that gives negative health points that exceed the player's current health points. For example, the player's default health is 20, and if holding an item with the attribute −21 health, the player can take two hits before dying, regardless of how much damage these hits inflict. The first one deals enough damage to reduce health to 1, and the second one kills the player. If the player uses a modified item to reduce health, sometimes the death screen appears. After clicking respawn, the player would shake in the death position and this can be fixed by ceasing to use the modified item.

Wolves and iron golems are the only mobs that show their remaining health visually. Horses, donkeys, mules, llamas, allays, and the wither are the only mobs that regenerate health naturally over time.

Death[]

Death occurs when all of a player or mob's health is depleted.

Upon the death of a player, a death message describing the cause of death is shown to everyone in that world. The death of a player's pet also creates a death message, but one that is shown only to its owner.

The /kill command instantly brings about death, and a parrot can be instantly killed by feeding it a cookie.‌^{[JE only]}

Players and most mobs fall on their left side to the ground when killed; the death animation always lasts 20 ticks (1 second). Squid do not have a death animation; spiders, endermites, and silverfish flip upside-down; the ender dragon ascends and explodes. When killed, mobs drop items at the location of death. In Java Edition they also drop experience upon death. In Bedrock Edition, once a fallen body disappears, it turns to dust and drops experience orbs at the disappearance location.

In Java Edition, mobs still count toward the mob cap during their death animation.^[1]

Player effects[]

For players, a "You Died!"‌^{[JE only]}/"You died!"‌^{[BE only]} screen (or "Game Over!" in Hardcore mode) appears, displaying the player's score,‌^{[Java Edition only]} and a death message. The view of the world is tinted red, render distance is reduced to default, the camera-view slowly tilts as if falling over, shudders, and zooms in slightly. In Bedrock Edition, it zooms in indefinitely. The following options appear on the screen:

• Respawn: either in the last bed the player slept in, at their default spawn point (their first spawn point in the game), their respawn anchor, or at the spawn point set by commands. In Hardcore mode, the player can respawn only in Spectator mode, and cannot continue because cheats are disabled.
• Return to the title screen.‌^{[JE only]}
• A link to give feedback on the death screen.‌^{[BE only]}

The death screen is not shown upon death if:

• the player holds a Totem of Undying in the main hand or off-hand and died without falling into the void, in which case the player resurrects upon death. Resurrection does not happen if the player fell into the void.
• the game rule doImmediateRespawn is set to true, in which case the player instantly respawns upon death without the death screen appearing, but a death message is still shown.

  

Any items or blocks that were in the player's inventory (except items enchanted with Curse of Vanishing) are dropped from their head, and scattered around the spot where the player died (unless the game rule keepInventory is set to true). Like any dropped item, these drops decay after five minutes while that chunk is loaded.

The player also loses any experience accumulated, reverting the level back to 0 (unless the game rule keepInventory is set to true) and drops experience orbs with a precise total value of player last level × 7 experience points (with a maximum of 100). After reaching between levels 7 and 8, the player always drops only 100 experience points regardless of level.

The player also loses all effects upon respawning, even when the game rule keepInventory is set to true.^[2]

Despite the fact that dead players disappear like all other mobs, it is still possible for the player to see their own hand while in the first-person mode.^[3]

Mob health[]

Some mobs have a different amount of health depending on whether they are in Java Edition or Bedrock Edition. Some mobs seem to take more hits before dying than their reported health points would suggest. This is due to the fact that these mobs have armor points, even though some cannot wear armor.

Mobs	Health
Playable	Player 20 × 10
Passive	Allay 20 × 10	Axolotl 14 × 7	Armadillo 6	Bat 6	Camel 32 × 16	Cat 10	Chicken 4
	Cod 3	Cow 10	Donkey 15 × 7.5 to 30 × 15	Fox 10‌[JE only] 20 × 10‌[BE only]	Frog 10	Glow Squid 10
	Horse 15 × 7.5 to 30 × 15	Mooshroom 10	Mule 15 × 7.5 to 30 × 15	Ocelot 10	Parrot 6	Pig 10
	Pufferfish 3	Rabbit 3	Salmon 3	Sheep 8	Skeleton Horse 15 × 7.5	Snow Golem 4
	Sniffer 14 × 7	Squid 10	Strider 20 × 10	Tadpole 6	Tropical Fish 3	Turtle 30 × 15
	Villager 20 × 10	Wandering Trader 20 × 10
Neutral	Bee 10	Cave Spider 12 × 6	Dolphin 10	Enderman 40 × 20	Goat 10	Iron Golem 100 × 50
	Llama 15 × 7.5 to 30 × 15	Panda 20 × 10 (Weak panda) 10	Piglin 16 × 8	Polar Bear 30 × 15	Spider 16 × 8	Trader Llama 15 × 7.5 to 30 × 15
	Wolf (untamed) 8 (tamed) 20 × 10	Zombified Piglin 20 × 10
Hostile	Blaze 20 × 10	Creeper 20 × 10	Drowned 20 × 10	Elder Guardian 80 × 40	Endermite 8	Evoker 24 × 12
	Ghast 10	Guardian 30 × 15	Hoglin 40 × 20	Husk 20 × 10	Magma Cube (big) 16 × 8 (small) 4 (tiny) 1	Phantom 20 × 10
	Piglin Brute 50 × 25	Pillager 24 × 12	Ravager 100 × 50	Shulker 30 × 15	Silverfish 8	Skeleton 20 × 10
	Slime (big) 16 × 8 (small) 4 (tiny) 1	Stray 20 × 10	Vex 14 × 7	Vindicator 24 × 12	Warden 500 × 250	Witch 26 × 13
	Wither Skeleton 20 × 10	Zoglin 40 × 20	Zombie 20 × 10	Zombie Villager 20 × 10
Bosses	Ender Dragon 200 × 100	Wither 300 × 150‌[JE only] 600 × 300‌[BE only]
Unused	Giant‌[JE only] 100 × 50	Illusioner‌[JE only] 32 × 16	Old Villager‌[BE only] 20 × 10	Old Zombie Villager‌[BE only] 20 × 10	Zombie Horse 15 × 7.5
Removed	Beast Boy 5	Black Steve 5	Human 20 × 10	Rana 13 × 6.5	Steve 5
Minecraft Education	Agent ∞ ( × ∞)	NPC ∞ ( × ∞)

Achievements[]

Advancements[]

Icon	Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Resource location
	Adventure	Adventure, exploration and combat	—	Kill any entity, or be killed by any entity.	adventure/root
	Postmortal	Use a Totem of Undying to cheat death	Monster Hunter	Activate a totem of undying by taking fatal damage.	adventure/totem_of_undying

Video[]

History[]

Java Edition Classic
August 18, 2009					Health bar and fall damage are teased.
August 20, 2009					Health bar blinking when damaged, damage invulnerability, and health bar shaking are teased.
0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST					All of the features mentioned above are added.
					Mushrooms now regain health.
					Enemies now fall over when killed.
Java Edition Indev
?					Dead mobs would fall on their left side instead of other random directions. Before suffocation was implemented, players that were covered by blocks could see through dirt and stone. Suffocation was added after Notch discovered that players were abusing this exploit to find underground caves and hollowed carvings. The patch added suffocation damage and making the player unable to see anything when experiencing it. However, this glitch is not completely fixed and is still possible to be done even in the existing version of the game.
					In Survival mode, eating a red mushroom would deal the player 3 of damage because they were poisonous.
Java Edition Alpha
v1.0.4					Players no longer suffocate when riding in a minecart.
Java Edition Beta
1.5					Unarmed damage is increased from 1 to 2.
1.8		Pre-release			Unarmed damage is decreased from 2 to 1.
					Regeneration effect added, increasing health.
Java Edition
1.0.0		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 2			Mobs can now have armor points.[4]
					Hearts now look different in Hardcore mode.
		RC1			The sound of the player taking damage is changed from a man's grunt to a cracking impact sound.
1.2.1		12w05b			The death screen now has a slight delay before buttons become active, to avoid accidentally clicking buttons when killed.
1.3.1		12w25a			Removed the downward knockback while drowning, which essentially trapped drowning players in multiplayer underwater.
1.8		14w32a			The health bar has a new animation for damage that shows how many hearts are lost.
1.11		16w39a			Added the totem of undying, which can save a player from death.
1.16.2		20w30a			Changed the "You died!" death splash screen to "You Died!"
Pocket Edition Alpha
v0.2.0					Health bar added.
v0.12.1		build 1			Regeneration effect is added that increases health.
					The sound of the player taking damage is changed from a man's grunt to a cracking impact sound.
Pocket Edition
1.1.0		alpha 1.1.0.0			Added the totem of undying, which can save a player from death.
Bedrock Edition
1.19.10		beta 1.19.10.21			Death messages are now displayed on the death screen.
1.19.80		beta 1.19.80.20			Updated the death screen.
Legacy Console Edition
TU1	CU1	1.0	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added the health bar.

Gallery[]

• 

  A preview of the health system seen on Notch's blog.^[5] Note how the sprite for the half-heart has a thick, black line in the middle.

• 

  Health displayed in the tab menu.

• 

  An example of the Bedrock Edition death screen, depicting Efe dying from a Creeper explosion.^[6]

• 

  "Rainbow Life Bar," an official T-Shirt design made to celebrate Pride Month.

References[]